The wine scene continues to evolve at a fast and furious pace up on Sicily’s Mount Etna. We’re having a hard time keeping up, but a fantastic time trying—the wines get better and better; the names behind them get bigger and bigger; the buzz louder and louder.
Today we’ve got another sensational, fully realized Etna red which, like so many “new” labels turning up on our shores, seems to have come out of nowhere. But the beauty of Mount Etna is that the raw material for world-class wine has long been there—all that was missing was the will and the investment to make it. Sofia and Concetto Bosco found two heirloom vineyards on Etna’s prized north slope, one of them with gnarly old bush-trained vines approaching 150 (!) years old, so while Tenute Bosco may have been founded in 2010, its roots go much, much deeper. Add in the expertise of agronomist Salvo Giuffrida, one of the most respected vineyard men on the mountain, and consulting enologist Carlo Ferrini, whose accolades are too many to list, and you get today’s pitch-perfect Etna Rosso from the 2016 vintage. Taste this wine and you’d think Tenute Bosco has been on Etna forever—and in way, given their raw material, they have. Right now, and likely not for much longer, we can enjoy these wines at very reasonable prices. But it won’t last—not with all the (totally justified) hype the wines are receiving. So, before Etna becomes “the Burgundy of Italy” in earnest, enjoy the spoils of the early adopter!
Mount Etna’s vineyards wrap around its northern, eastern, and southern slopes, rooted in mineral-rich volcanic pumice at altitudes that often exceed 1,000 meters. Although wine has been made here for centuries, the region’s modern revival began about 20 years ago and included many intrepid “outsiders” who saw what was possible there and began reviving abandoned vineyards—many of which had been overrun by lava flows from the still-active volcano. There’s an undoubtedly romantic, adventure-packed component to farming here—as one vintner famously noted, “you can lose it all on Etna”—but also a practical one: Reds and whites alike grown in this unique environment are nothing short of thrilling. Mineral, Chablis-inspired whites from Carricante are often sourced from the same vineyards as red from Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio. Both are blessed with profound minerality, cool-climate finesse, and the extra gear of complexity a longer growing season instills.
Producers on Etna are heavily invested in the comparisons being made to the wines of Burgundy, and as we speak, an effort is underway to map Etna’s vineyards with the same precision that Burgundy has. We are already seeing vineyard designations on wine labels (specific vineyard subzones are known as contrade on Etna), and while there are sites of distinction all over the region, the contrade of the north slope have attracted the most acclaim. Running through towns such as Randazzo, Passopisciaro, Solicchiatta, and Rovittello, state route 120 is Etna’s answer to Burgundy’s Route de Grands Crus. These villages are considered the premier terroirs thanks to their cooler microclimates, and Tenute Bosco’s two properties—in Passopisciaro and Solicchiata—are set amid a who’s-who of Etna’s best.
Today’s ’16 is comprised of 90% Nerello Mascalese and 10% Nerello Cappuccio sourced from their “Piano dei Dani” vineyard in Solicchiata, where altitudes exceed 600 meters. It was aged 10 months in 700-liter French oak barrels, followed by three in tank and six in bottle; Ferrini’s touch can be detected in the fine-grained, polished tannins and subtle oak spice underpinning the ample wild-berry fruit. As I’ve found with other top Etna reds, there’s a close kinship between Nerello Mascalese and Burgundian Pinot Noir, although Nerello ends up veering off in its own Mediterranean direction. In the glass, it’s a bright garnet-ruby moving to pink at the rim, with aromas of blackberries, red currants, strawberries, figs, lavender, leather, and dusty earth. Just above medium-bodied and quite silky on the palate, it has a nice mix of spicy rusticity and textural refinement. Decant it at least 30 minutes before serving in Burgundy stems at 60-65 degrees, or lay it down for further evolution over the next 3-5 years. I’m going to go old-school ‘Italian-American’ here and include a recipe for eggplant
alla parmigiana. Very Sicilian, no matter where you make it. Cheers!
